OFFSTAGE: The Song Writes Ashley Monroe

(CMT Offstage keeps a 24/7 watch on everything that’s happening with country music artists behind the scenes and
out of the spotlight.)

Ashley Monroe sure makes it sound easy. She’s one
of the three Pistol Annies — and a solo artist as well — and she explained to CMT
Radio that writing songs with bandmates Miranda Lambert and Angaleena
Presley comes very naturally.

“We don’t really ever sit down and think when we write. We don’t go, ‘Oh we need
an up-tempo or we need to write about this.’ When we write, it just happens,” said Monroe, who is one of CMT’s
Next Women of Country.

“There is a Guy Clark song that says, ‘Some days you
write the song, some days the song writes you.’ The song writes us every time, which I think comes across and makes it special.
Afterward we will listen to it and we will get chills,” she adds.

That makes sense because I get chills, too, listening
to the songs on their new Annie Up album. Mostly on “Damn Thing,” “I Feel a Sin Comin’ On,” “Unhappily Married” and
“Dear Sobriety.”

Lambert agrees with Monroe that the songs kind of write themselves. “It’s almost like we don’t realize
it is happening,” Lambert said.